Noise-capturing cameras were set up one a year and a half year ago to identify and fine “drivers who honk for no apparent reason.”

By Pesach Benson, TPS

To combat noise pollution, Petah Tikva became the first Israeli municipality to begin installing sound sensors in parks on Monday as part of a pilot project to collect data and provide real-time alerts for excessive noise.

“As part of the municipality’s activities to maintain order in the public space and prevent noise pollution, this year the innovative system for enforcing noise on the road began operating in Petah Tikva – for the first time in the country,” said Petah Tikva Mayor Rami Greenberg.

The first sensors were placed in the city’s Neve Gan Park. More than 250,000 people live in Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv.

Dganit Tal, head of the municipality’s environment department, explained to The Press Service of Israel that the initiative builds on a pilot project to reduce excessive honking by motorists.

“We have several major roads inside the city, with traffic at any time of the day, with multi-story residential buildings on both sides. It is hard for the residents to have this amount of noise coming from the windows,” Tal told TPS-IL.

Noise-capturing cameras were set up one and a half years ago to identify and fine “drivers who honk for no apparent reason.”

Tal told TPS-IL, “Since the start of the project, some 1,400 drivers have been penalized. We don’t do this to get some extra money to the city budget, we want to educate the people, and we see it works.”

According to Tal, the number of tickets issued has dropped by 40 percent since the traffic pilot’s launch.

She explained that the sensors installed in the Neve Gan Park will send info to the municipal center.

“Once the system identifies large gatherings, especially of young people, a city patrol will be able to arrive at the place and warn against making too much noise even before this happens,” Tal said.

Noise pollution refers to excessive or disruptive sounds that negatively impact the health, well-being, or comfort of humans and wildlife. It is typically caused by human activities, such as traffic, industrial operations, construction, loud music, and machinery.

Prolonged exposure to noises 70 decibels or louder — such as a vacuum cleaner at close range — can harm hearing or health.

Noise pollution has been associated with hearing loss, stress, sleep disturbances, cardiovascular issues, and reduced productivity.

For wildlife, researchers have found it can disrupt communication, navigation and even breeding.

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The new penalty is the largest amount ever issued in the United States against an airline over civil rights violations.

By Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA

The U.S. Department of Transportation has ordered the German airline Lufthansa to pay a $4 million fine for a 2022 incident in which 128 Jewish passengers were denied boarding.

The incident, which occurred in May 2022, affected passengers wearing traditionally Orthodox Jewish clothing who were traveling from New York City through Frankfurt to Budapest.

In response to a few passengers’ alleged misbehavior partly related to mask compliance, Lufthansa employees reportedly treated the 128 Jewish passengers as one single group, though many of the passengers did not know each other, nor were they traveling together.

Airline employees prohibited them from boarding their flight to Budapest.

The incident generated outrage from the Jewish community and captured the attention of leading antisemitism watchdogs, including Deborah Lipstadt, the United States’ special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, who told NBC News that she found the Lufthansa incident “unbelievable.”

“[When] I first heard it, I said, ‘Oh, this must be wrong,” Lipstadt said at the time. “Someone must be misreporting this.’ And then of course, it turned out to be precisely right — and worse than we even thought.”

Later that year, the American Jewish Committee signed a memorandum of understanding with Lufthansa, announcing that Lufthansa would adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and that the AJC would train airline employees on how to identify and respond to antisemitism.

In July 2022, Lufthansa CEO Jens Ritter said the company would hire someone to fill a senior management position “for the prevention of discrimination and antisemitism.”

The airline also agreed to pay each affected passenger $20,000 from the airline in November 2022, plus a reimbursement of $1,000.

The new penalty, which followed an investigation into more than 40 discrimination complaints from Jewish passengers aboard the flight, is the largest amount ever issued in the United States against an airline over civil rights violations, the federal transportation department said in a statement Tuesday.

“No one should face discrimination when they travel, and today’s action sends a clear message to the airline industry that we are prepared to investigate and take action whenever passengers’ civil rights are violated,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.

In the consent order attached to the DOT’s statement announcing the penalty, Lufthansa denied the occurrence of any discrimination, instead attributing the incident to “an unfortunate series of inaccurate communications, misinterpretations, and misjudgments throughout the decision-making process.” The company again apologized for the incident.

“Lufthansa states that it has zero tolerance for any form of religious or ethnic-based discrimination, including antisemitism,” the company said in the consent order.

“Lufthansa states that it and the entire passenger airline group have had a robust and fruitful relationship with the Jewish communities around the world, especially in the United States. Lufthansa states that it is a trusted choice, to this day, for members of the Orthodox Jewish Community who continue to use the Lufthansa Group for travel throughout Europe as well as to Israel.”

The Lufthansa airline group has canceled all flights to and from Israel until at least the end of this month, amid broad interruptions in air service induced by widening conflict in the region.

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The judge in New York ordered Trump to pay $355 million after concluding he had lied about his wealth for years.

By The Associated Press

Former President Donald Trump railed against the judge who slapped him with a $355 million fine in his New York civil fraud trial and went after the long list of prosecutors with cases against him as he campaigned in Michigan Saturday night while facing penalties that, with interest, could exceed half-a-billion dollars.

Trump was making his pitch in a state that is expected to be critical in November as he pivots toward a likely general election rematch against President Joe Biden. While Biden narrowly beat Trump here in 2020, the president is facing deep skepticism in the state, especially from Arab-American voters angry over his support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas war as the Palestinian death toll has climbed.

Trump, meanwhile, has been working to appeal to the blue-collar and union voters who were critical to his victory in 2016. On Saturday, he again made his pitch to auto workers, railing against electric vehicle mandates that he argues will ultimately lead to lost jobs and touted tariffs he put in place.

“We have to let them know a freight train is coming in November,” Trump told more than 2,000 supporters gathered in a freezing plane hangar in Waterford Township, in the suburbs of Detroit.

But Trump was again most focused on his grievances, opening with a 15-minute screed about the criminal and civil cases against him.

On Friday, a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay $355 million after concluding he had lied about his wealth for years, scheming to dupe banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements. Trump has vowed to appeal.

That penalty came days after Trump was ordered to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for damaging her reputation after she accused him of sexual assault.

With interest payments, Trump’s legal debts might now exceed a half-billion dollars — an amount it is unclear whether or not Trump can afford to pay.

Trump cast Friday’s decision as “a lawless and unconstitutional atrocity that sets fire to our laws like no one has ever seen in this country before.”

He called the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, “crooked,” and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the case, a “lunatic.” He called special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against him an “animal,” while mocking the pronunciation of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ name.

Trump has succeeded in the GOP primary by casting the charges — which include state and federal criminal indictments across four separate jurisdictions — as part of a coordinated effort by Biden and other Democrats to damage his electoral prosects. He has also repeatedly cast them as an attack on his supporters.

“These repulsive abuses of power are not just an attack on me, they’re really an attack on you and all Americans,” Trump said Saturday. “We’re all in this mess together!”

But it’s unclear whether those appeals will work in a general election, particularly among suburban voters in key swing-state metro areas in places like Oakland County, where Trump was speaking Saturday.

An affluent Detroit suburb and the state’s second-largest county, Oakland County was once a GOP stronghold, but has trended more Democratic in recent elections, in part due to women voters. Trump lost the county to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, both times by eight percentage points.

While Michigan will hold its primary next after South Carolina, only 16 out of 55 Republican presidential delegates will be determined by the Feb. 27 vote.

The remaining 39 will be distributed by precinct delegates at a Michigan GOP state convention on March 2.

Trump’s visit came as the state’s GOP has been in turmoil, amid competing claims on the chairmanship and financial crisis.

Trump waded carefully into the chaos by offering a shoutout to the newly elected state GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra, a former longtime U.S. House member and Trump loyalist who served as Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands.

Hoekstra was elected after then-Chair Kristina Karamo was ousted after racking up hundreds of thousands in debt.

“A great congressman, and a great ambassador,” Trump said.

A lone man in the crowd still loyal to Karamo, who has said she won’t cede the position, booed and called Hoekstra a RINO. The term is intended as an insult and an acronym for Republican In Name Only.

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